friday, may 28, 2010
MUSIC
Nikolai Lugansky
& Co. dazzle
The Philadelphia Orchestra wows the audience at Strathmore with an all-Russian
program. C3
Style
ABCDE
C
S
MUSIC
He’s not holding a magic wand
It’s unfair to expect that conductor Gustavo Dudamel can save classical. C3
FAMILY ALMANAC
Look at the options
Don’t euthanize the family cat before you’ve fully explored its biting issues. C7
THE TV COLUMN
If they don’t snooze, they don’t lose
May sweeps show ratings growth for local newscasts at 4:30 a.m. C4
3@washingtonpost.com/style Carolyn Hax takes your questions and comments about her columns and any other questions you might have about the strange train we call life at noon.
Could this be greatest political ad ever made?
Alabama’s Dale Peterson aims true with his intense, straight-shooting commercial
by Neely Tucker
Can he come from nowhere to win, friends and neighbors? Can the butt- kicking legend of Dale Peterson actually come true? The rifle-toting, tough-talking star of
Unplugged
T
When 8 reporters ditch digital gadgets, a sense of discovery does the talking
he idea of learning what’s really important by denying yourself the things you love is as old as religion, as elemental as praying
or fasting. So when eight Post reporters got to talking about their attachment — no, addiction — to their BlackBerrys, mobiles, Twitter and Facebook, it was only natural that someone said, okay, let’s go without, if only for a week. No Web, period. If you need to talk to some- one, do it in person or by phone. ¶ Every- one got excited: What would our friends and loved ones think if we didn’t respond to their texts and e-mails? Would we be able to do our work? Could we make it five whole days? ¶ The experiment began on a Monday morning, but for three days prior, as their boss, I was peppered with messages asking, “Are we really doing this?” Which became “Do we have to do this?” Which, in the final hours before we started, morphed into “I think I need an exception because...” ¶ So what did happen? Most found ways to sneak out of the experiment early. A couple had epiphanies and claim they will hence- forth conduct more of their social con- tacts in the flesh. A couple reverted in- stantly to old ways. But during those few days, people got up out of their cubicles and wandered over to chat. They went out to lunch together. They had con- versations. It was old school, it was sweet, it was a moment. Then, like a fast, it was over.
— Marc Fisher
J. FREEDOM DU LAC
Turns out, there wasn’t much to miss
I realized that I don’t partic- ularly care about what I don’t know. For instance, this tweet: “About
to watch film on The Doors on PBS by Tom ‘Living in Oblivion’ DiCillo, even though I stopped loving them after 1st album.” And this: “Found: black Mero- na sweater vest (size small) in the hallway between the women’s restroom and the kitchen on the fourth
floor,” as someone wrote on The Post’s internal messaging system while I was offline for 114 hours last week. The Internet is like a
faucet that’s always run- ning full-out, saturating my brain with news, gossip, gripes, japes, bootlegged Prince videos, status updates, ranked lists, baseball scores, Josh Ritter songs,
funnyordie.com videos and long-form stories about ev- erything from the guy who made a fortune on credit-default swaps to the roots of fantasy baseball. The flood is hardly overwhelm- ing — no information-overload rant here — but it’s not exactly necessary, either. After the ex- periment ended, I went back to see what I’d missed. I received 450 e-mails (not counting spam), along with 24 Facebook messages and 231 more on The Post’s mes- sage system. I missed 37 text mes- sages, including one from my wife asking why I wasn’t online,
and thousands of tweets, which I’d normally scan so that I’d know, in semi-real time, what’s going on in every corner of the world that interests me — and even in some that don’t, like Cleveland. I decided I hadn’t missed much
of anything, aside from an in- vitation to a poker tournament, a funny observation about a particular coun- try singer’s forehead and this “correction,” which I received from three different friends: “In our Saturday post about the California Democratic Party’s ad . . . we described the abrupt ending to our
conversation with CDP Chairman John Burton. Through his spokesman, Burton on Monday complained that he had been misquoted. Burton says he didn’t say ‘[Expletive] you.’ His actual words were, ‘Go [expletive] your- self.’ Calbuzz regrets the error.” As they say online, where I’ve been forwarding that item to friends and colleagues all day: L.O.L. Internet, I take it all back. I
can’t quit you.
dulacj@washpost.com
See the results of their wireless week. | C8
what many consider, either in awe or ter- ror, to be the ultimate American political ad ever now faces the moment of truth in his quest for the once-obscure office of Alabama Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries. On Tuesday, Peterson, a 64-year-old political neophyte, must shake off the stardust won by his instant- icon Internet ad during the past two weeks and win the Republican primary. But there are no reliable statewide polls to suggest the standing of any of the three candidates for the office, and it’s anybody’s guess whether Peterson and his white cowboy hat will win in a landslide or be written off as a laughing- stock.
“I want to run some crooks off and get this state turned around, big guy,” he
peterson continued on C7
4 THE RELIABLE SOURCE
Neighbor watch
Joe McGinness Jr. tells how his father, the author, came to rent the house in Alaska next door to Sarah Palin’s. C2
YOUTUBE.COM
LISTEN UP! Dale Peterson grabs viewers, and he hopes voters, with an intense Internet and TV spot.
TV PREVIEW
Falling out of love with a fixation
After ‘Deal’ and ‘Queen,’
by Hank Stuever
“The Special Relationship,” airing Sat-
urday night on HBO, is the last in a tril- ogy of films, each written by Peter Mor- gan, that view life and political duty in the ever-more-distant 1990s through the conflicted soul of former British prime minister Tony Blair. Each film has turned Blair (played once more by Michael Sheen) into a sincere and almost unbe- lievably naive searcher. He presents a calm, collected, media-savvy front and yet, behind closed doors, seems riddled with doubt. The first movie was “The Deal” in 2003, which observantly dramatized Blair’s rise to prominence. And everyone loved the second part, “The Queen,” which recount- ed the delicate protocol skirmishes that immediately followed the death of Prin- cess Diana. It was released in theaters and was up for a Best Picture Oscar in 2007. (Helen Mirren won Best Actress in
tv preview continued on C4
HARRY CAMPBELL FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
HBO’s ‘Special Relationship’ breaks up over Blair, Clinton
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